Sorry, I can't come into work. I caught a bad case of violence.

http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/intimatepartnerviolence/index.html

Frankly, I'm down right intrigued by the fact that the center for disease control talks about violence at all let alone has it's own separate section for intimate partner violence. However, I think their defining intimate partner violence as disease is a step in the right direction to understanding it. During our class discussion it seemed that we kept getting hung up on the fact that people stay in relationships after an incident of intimate partner violence. To me, the problem is that we we're not viewing the situation from the right angle. If people in abusive relationships could help themselves, they would. I like viewing intimate partner violence as a disease because it redefines it as something that both contagious and that is not a choice. Several people during the discussion mentioned how they themselves had been a victim of intimate partner violence and the reason they could not get away from the relationship is that they were addicted to it. To me, this reinforces the idea that being in an abusive relationship runs much deeper than we typically assume. I also like the idea of intimate partner violence as something contagious. Often times we talk about being a bystander to injustice or oppression as opposed to openly disagreeing with the Discourse and how this reinforces the discourse. By being a passive bystander to IPV you're allowing it to spread among our collective ideas as a culture. People aren't going to change overnight and they certainly will not change on their own because they're pretty happy with how they act. However, if we person by person can start re-framing the discourse on IPV we can spread this new positive idea throughout our cultural conscious. While the spread of the idea does not mean people will adhere to it, it does mean that we tried. The world change often seems impossible to change, and frankly at times is. However, if we don't attempt to overcome the discourse it will never change on it's own.

Agency or lack there of

The above pictures, to me at least, illustrate the two biggest problems facing women today. The first picture is perhaps the most disturbing rhetorical device of our generation: female submission achieved under the guise of female empowerment. The first picture is taken from Dove's Dove girl ad campaign. The campaign is centered around the idea of showing women that do not like supermodels and showing how truly "sexy" they are. The ad propagates the idea that  these "real" women every bit as attractive as supermodels. However, this ad still focuses on the wrong thing, the women's physical beauty. If we are truly trying  to combat the idea of women as nothing more than objects that gain worth through a man's desire (empowerment), then why does this ad say that these women are every bit as desirable as supermodels? All this ad does is say "Oh big girls... don't worry they're just as desirable as skinny girls. Because that's how we define a woman, by how many guys want to have sex with her... because really that's all a woman needs in a life, a man's acceptance." Nothing about his picture is empowering. Rather than focusing on what makes these women productive members of society it turns them into sex objects. The second ad showcases what I think is the 2nd biggest problem women face: they can never be a truly untied front. The second ad implies that even as a man is beating the shit out of you, it's still important to look pretty and have nice hair. While the image and message are disturbing enough, the most troubling fact is that a woman willingly posed for this picture. No matter how hard certain members of the women's movement try to redefine what a woman's place in modern society is, there will always be someone who's willing to pose with a black eye and sadly that black eye reaches a much wider audience than any feminist manifesto does. Because women cannot form a unified consensus, they are doomed to be undermined from within to the point that the movement will never truly gain large scale traction.

Why women can't be men.

http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/10/07/karen-owen-duke-sex-list-powerpoint/

During the reading this week we discussed the story of Rebecca. Rebecca was the female basketball player who  had adopted a masculine persona and was by all accounts perceived as a masculine figure throughout the school. this makes me wonder, what does it take for a women to be perceived as masculine. There's a recent trend of women attempting to "own" their sexuality in an attempt to redefine what it means for a woman to be sexually active. However, I feel this very short sighted and ultimately wrong. The above link shares the story of Karen Owens. Karen made a powerpoint detailing all of the sexual exploits she had with athletes while she was a student at Duke university. Karen intended for the power point to be distributed to 3 very close friends. However, one of her friends shared the power point and shortly there after the powerpoint went viral thrusting Karen into the spotlight. In the ensuing media firestorm Karen disappeared from public life and deleted all of her social media accounts. Pro-feminist came to Karen's defense saying that there's nothing wrong with a female being sexually active and that Karen was simply doing boys had been doing for years. This in turn they argued was empowering. 1) If Karen was empowered she would not have disappeared off the face of the Earth. 2) If you read Karen's powerpoint you come to realize that several of the Men in the powerpoint outright used her for sex and she rationalized it by saying that's what she wanted. 3) Regardless of your intention, being used by others because they only value you for your body is never something to be proud of, not saying your a slut, just saying your priorities are immature. Karen's problem and resulting shame is that doing "masculine" things does not making you masculine. As a society we cannot accept the idea of a feminine body doing masculine things. I mean body in the most literal sense, what separates Rebecca and Karen is that Rebecca masculinized her body. In the book Pascoe mentions how by referring to herself as a pimp talked about playing girls, Rebecca had mascunlinized her body. I think it's very important that she said body instead of words, view, or actions. To me, this means masculinity has look, and you know it when you see it. When those students looked  at Rebecca they saw a masculine persona, and we as a society look at Karen we see a feminine persona. To be masculine is to be masculine. By that I mean, acting masculine doesn't make you masculine, and nothing really can. When you're masculine, you simply are it will shine through. Whether you're a man or a woman it will shine through. I consider he case of our guest speaker AJ. It took some time but AJ's masculinity eventually came out. Even now, AJ is a very small man with a vagina who used to be a woman. But AJ had a presence, something you couldn't define as masculine but you knew that it was.